Federal NDP Leadership Race - What do you want out of Canada's progressive party?

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by you&me

Maybe you just need to push your point a little more.

Making an argument based on numbers only because they sound big is pointless without context. Woven got close here:



Yes, 6 billion is a big number but when you look at it as the entire profit for an entire industry of a nation, it feels less so. And when you neglect to do the difficult math like $6B for a population of 40mm, the $150 in annual profits per person really doesn't seem like that much...

The added context that it has gone up 100+% in 5 years is kind of a big deal.

[Johnny Makarov]

Sorry NDP. you are going to have to stay dead for the next few elections so we can unite the left.

After watching the deplorable moron on his trumplike press conference today the orange will have to make the sacrifice to save Canada.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Considering how quickly that accelerated, I do not think it is unreasonable to believe that we could get back to 2019+20%, which would be a big step up from 2019 numbers but 20% revenue increase over 6 years is still a big increase. Even if we could just reign that market in at $4B, it would be an unreasonable jump

So to confirm, you think we can reduce profits in the grocery industry by $2 billion, thus offering a savings of $50 per Canadian on food bills (2B ÷ 50 MM).

Originally Posted by Wolven

I think a big thing people will always fail to consider with the idea of a public grocer is that even if we each are contributing $500 in tax dollars to make it happen

And to do this you're prepared to raise taxes by $500 per person.

I feel like it should be obvious why this idea might not resonate with Canadians.

Tbh I think this is emblematic of the problem the NDP has - they float stuff that is obviously a bad idea. If they focused on supporting union jobs and fiscal supports for the bottom 50% of incomes they'd (imo) be pretty electable.

Things like an auto-pact type deal with Asian countries (for every vehicle you assemble with a minimum $ content here you can sell one in Canada duty free).

Provide low cost financing for electrical transmission infrastruce across the country - it's mostly provincially owned, adds tons of union construction jobs, and is necessary for adding data centre/AI industries.

National pharmacare

Etc.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

So to confirm, you think we can reduce profits in the grocery industry by $2 billion, thus offering a savings of $50 per Canadian on food bills (2B ÷ 50 MM).



And to do this you're prepared to raise taxes by $500 per person.

No, you cut off the second half of my sentence.

"I think a big thing people will always fail to consider with the idea of a public grocer is that even if we each are contributing $500 in tax dollars to make it happen, it is worth it if we end up saving any number that is more than $500 of post tax money when buying groceries."

You can replace "500" with whatever number you want. I think most people understand that spending pre-tax dollars to save post-tax dollars is a win. If we can stop the cost of groceries from continuing to skyrocket in cost then that is a win. If we can reduce the cost of groceries, then that is a huge win.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Wolven

No, you cut off the second half of my sentence.

"I think a big thing people will always fail to consider with the idea of a public grocer is that even if we each are contributing $500 in tax dollars to make it happen, it is worth it if we end up saving any number that is more than $500 of post tax money when buying groceries."

You can replace "500" with whatever number you want. I think most people understand that spending pre-tax dollars to save post-tax dollars is a win. If we can stop the cost of groceries from continuing to skyrocket in cost then that is a win. If we can reduce the cost of groceries, then that is a huge win.

I mean, I can't believe I'm doing this...

We can figure out what the "whatever number you want" is... There are 30mm tax-filers in Canada and you're wanting to reduce grocery profits by $2B. There was a post earlier that the bottom 50% of filers only contribute 5% of taxes, so let's eliminate them from the equation - you essentially have 15mm people needing to fund a program that will save Canadians $2B annually, which is $133 per payer...

So you have 15mm people paying $133 per year, to theoretically save $50 per year for the entire population.

Or let's take it a step further: since this is such a glorious idea (comrade), let's just nationalize the entire industry and wipe all $6B of profit out. Those same 15mm tax payers would have to pay $400 a year so every Canadian can save $150.

Which all sounds kinda meaningless great, until you consider that this (from the same post I referred to above):

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

...

But the tricky thing is that the median income of the whole top 50% (ie. the top 25%) was 76,200 (2023), which is to say that income level is still a subsidizer and not a subsidizee (which is totally fine)...

So the vast majority of those 15mm tax payers in the top 50% aren't exactly rich. Most likely, a typical family of four in this group has two working parents... so in the scenario where we're slashing profits by $2B, that family would contribute $266 a year to save $200. When we nationalize the grocers and eliminate all profit, that family of four would need to contribute $800 to save $600.

Sure some single income households, single parents with 2 or more children would come out ahead... but at what cost? Like someone said earlier, this sounds like a really really (really) complex wealth redistribution scheme.

The list of assumptions to get to this point is so long I can't believe anyone would genuinely believe this is a good idea.

Like I said, just because the numbers are big doesn't mean that they're meaningful... you seem really hung up on that $6B in profit, but it's really a nothing-burger in the scheme of things.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Wolven

No, you cut off the second half of my sentence.

"I think a big thing people will always fail to consider with the idea of a public grocer is that even if we each are contributing $500 in tax dollars to make it happen, it is worth it if we end up saving any number that is more than $500 of post tax money when buying groceries."

You can replace "500" with whatever number you want. I think most people understand that spending pre-tax dollars to save post-tax dollars is a win. If we can stop the cost of groceries from continuing to skyrocket in cost then that is a win. If we can reduce the cost of groceries, then that is a huge win.

I guess you separately came up with (what I would consider reasoable) estimates of the costs and benefits as $500 and $50 respectively, and then said that as long as the benefits exceed the costs we're good.

There's no situation where people save more than $500 on groceries per person from the system with a subsidy of only $500 per person - there isn't enough profit in the system that can be eliminated.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I wonder how old Wolven is.

[chemgear]

Can you imagine the utopia I can build with all of your money?

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I wonder how old Wolven is.

Eh, young or old, I think people kind of get flummoxed when numbers this big are involved. It's kind of hard for most people to think in terms of the budget of a reasonably large country like Canada, with numbers like hundreds of millions, billions, a trillion, etc. being thrown around. Numbers that sound huge really don't end up being much.

It's like asking someone to guess how tall a building is and express it only in millimetres.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I guess my question to you is where do you see the benefits coming from?

Empire Co (owner of Safeway and Sobeys) had sales of $31.4 billion and profits of $700 MM in the trailing twelve month period. So if your baseline is the government coule be as efficient as the private sector and could operate with zero profits you could drop food prices 2.2%.

Of course, they've invested ~$12 billion in property, plant and equipment to get that result, so to duplicate the real estate base you have to spend all that money first (and probably much more - not that likely their real estate has gone down in value...)

If you just want to subsidize people with tax dollars you can do that, but then why spend tens of billions setting up infrastructure - just use direct deposit.

And of course, the government isn't going to do all those bad things to boost profits, so the savings will be smaller. Then you have the cost of bureaucratic oversight and less aggressively negotiated labour contracts. Hard to see there being any savings at all.

For starters, a government run grocery store could implement the policy that France uses to not throw away expiring food but rather to donate it. The former policy exists to artificially deflate supply.

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Sorry NDP. you are going to have to stay dead for the next few elections so we can unite the left.

After watching the deplorable moron on his trumplike press conference today the orange will have to make the sacrifice to save Canada.

I would not call the LPC part of the left at this point. They have been pushing right-leaning policy since trudeau left and the elections occured.

They only appear "left" because your frame of reference is the fascist CPC, but that's exactly why "uniting" the "left" is inherently problematic. We don't need to be a two party state where the options are far right and right. That's how you get the USA

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Eh, young or old, I think people kind of get flummoxed when numbers this big are involved. It's kind of hard for most people to think in terms of the budget of a reasonably large country like Canada, with numbers like hundreds of millions, billions, a trillion, etc. being thrown around. Numbers that sound huge really don't end up being much.

It's like asking someone to guess how tall a building is and express it only in millimetres.

In both cases those are just a framing problem. If you want to estimate a building in mm first you should estimate it in metres and then multiply by a thousand.

If you want to understand the impact of billions of dollars of spending/benefits in Canada I think it's helpful to think about it on a per-person basis (ie, if you cut $2 billion in profits out of the system that's a savings of $50 per person).

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

In both cases those are just a framing problem. If you want to estimate a building in mm first you should estimate it in metres and then multiply by a thousand.

If you want to understand the impact of billions of dollars of spending/benefits in Canada I think it's helpful to think about it on a per-person basis (ie, if you cut $2 billion in profits out of the system that's a savings of $50 per person).

Had I followed my gut instinct and said "inches", the simplicity and elegance of a base-10 numbering system would be out the window and I think it would have demonstrated my point a bit better. Damned metric-ish upbringing.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

In both cases those are just a framing problem. If you want to estimate a building in mm first you should estimate it in metres and then multiply by a thousand.

If you want to understand the impact of billions of dollars of spending/benefits in Canada I think it's helpful to think about it on a per-person basis (ie, if you cut $2 billion in profits out of the system that's a savings of $50 per person).

The real framing problem is looking at the profits private businesses generate and thinking the government needs to enter the market to actively manipulate the market and reduce the prices... even after being informed that margins are already very thin, profits on a per-customer basis are ridiculously small... And in light of that, looking at those numbers and the complexity of the business (real estate, supply chain, distribution, staff, etc) and still thinking "this is a business the government should get into itself"

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Had I followed my gut instinct and said "inches", the simplicity and elegance of a base-10 numbering system would be out the window and I think it would have demonstrated my point a bit better. Damned metric-ish upbringing.

Lol. To be honest if I was estimating the height of a building in metres I'd probably estimate in feet and then multiply by 3.

But my recipes are an unholy mix of cups and mL measurements, so you know...